


lead me into the light

by itsmyusualphannie (itsmyusualweeb)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alien Planet, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Space, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Astronauts, Exploration, Geology, M/M, Outer Space, Survival Horror, Thriller, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21913528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmyusualweeb/pseuds/itsmyusualphannie
Summary: Dan and Phil are part of a crew of space explorers currently embarking on a dangerous mission to check out a supposedly lifeless planet far away from home.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 26
Kudos: 28
Collections: Phandom Fic Fests Holiday Exchange 2019





	lead me into the light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thespacecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thespacecat/gifts).



> thanks to [cal](https://candanandphilnot.tumblr.com/) and [kei](https://sudden-sky.tumblr.com/) for yelling at me to just write this and to [lou](https://counting2fifteen.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing it last minute! you keep me alive my frends
> 
> this was written for the phandom fic fests holiday exchange. happy holidays to you, [asher](https://nebulaearecool.tumblr.com/)! i hope you like your gift. you had such incredible prompts, it was hard to decide between them, but i've wanted to do a space fic for a while now so this was a really fun opportunity! i hope you like it a tiny bit as much as i liked writing it.
> 
> ~~yeah i got the title from katy perry's e.t. but i'm not sorry~~

_Thump_. A muffled pat to Phil’s shoulder. “All right, you’re good. Do mine now.”

Phil stood slowly, the heavy material fully encasing his torso and legs weighing him down, and turned to face his partner. Now that the back of his suit was zipped and buttoned in all the different ways it could possibly be zipped and buttoned, he could work on Dan’s. He gestured, the thick gloves on his hand hampering the movement. “Turn around.”

Dan turned, and Phil reached for the long zipper on the back of his suit. The zippers were massive, made to be handled with the bulky gloves, but they were still difficult to manage. He managed, though, and made his way to the next zipper, this one layering over the first. They were designed like this in order to create an airtight seal between the person who wore the suit and whatever environment they might encounter.

“You guys almost ready?” a voice called from the next room - PJ, who was their pilot that had flown the two explorers down to the planet’s surface.

“Five minutes,” said Phil in response, not bothering to raise his voice. This space was so confined that it wouldn’t even be necessary. His fingers brushed over the ‘SSSE - SuperSonic Space Explorers’ logo as he tugged the last zipper shut. It was a mouthful, their twelve-person team name. Phil liked to just call them “the Sonics,” but to his disappointment, none of the others had quite caught a liking to it yet. It was particularly funny, Phil decided, because walking was usually mind-numbingly slow once they got outside of the transporters.

Phil was finished in three more minutes and then all they had were their helmets. Dan picked up his, the dome sleek and shimmering in his hands, but Phil caught him before he put it on. Sneaking a sly glance at the opening that led to the next room, he reached a few fingers to turn Dan’s jaw toward him, and then he swept in to land a quick kiss against the pink hue of Dan’s lips. Dan’s mouth curled into a smile and his dimples appeared, which was exactly what Phil had wanted to happen.

“There,” said Phil, satisfied, and slipped his own helmet over his head. Air hissed around his ears as it settled into place and automatically pressurized his suit. Pale blue light flickered across the glass of his helmet, displaying information from the internal computer. “Now we’re ready.”

They headed toward the tiny cubicle on the side of the room and squeezed inside. A panel slid shut, sealing them inside, and then, in the next room, PJ hit the button that allowed them outside. Another panel on the opposite side of the cubicle slid open and bitter, unfamiliar air rushed in. If they weren’t wearing their suits, this atmosphere would have pulled the air from their lungs.

Dan and Phil stepped outside.

Outside was an alien, otherworldly landscape. It rolled and dipped in unnatural heaves around them, alternating rocks leaping in jagged spires toward the sky and yawning pits plunging far down toward the planet’s core. They were settled on one of the flattest places on the entire planet, but it was still a steep incline.

The panel hissed shut behind Dan and Phil as their wide shoes thumped lightly on the ragged surface. Their ship, behind them now, was a sleek, small thing, barely larger than a school bus. It didn’t need to be much bigger, as it was just a transport. The actual deep-space carrier, a cruise ship-sized, sturdy thing, waited for them just outside the harshest pull of this planet’s gravity.

It was easy to walk here, Phil found, as his feet picked up much easier than it did on their ship’s artificially-induced gravity. The gravity here was a little weaker than Earth’s. Their suits weighed them down though, as well as the magnet-lined soles of their boots. The restrained magnets wanted to cling to the iron-rich surface of the ground, so if Phil ever found himself taking too large of a step, he could simply activate an electrical current and settle his feet back on the ground.

The speaker inside Phil’s helmet crackled with static, but it was just Dan, and not a transmission from PJ.

“Two hundred samples, right?” Dan confirmed. The speaker lagged just a little behind his words, and it would be disconcerting to see Dan’s mouth moving right before his voice came through if Phil wasn’t used to it by now.

“Yeah,” Phil agreed. He patted the side of his suit, where the bulky material held rows and rows and _rows_ of tiny containers tucked in cute pockets. “The planet has already been classified as dead, so we’re just getting environment samples. We should be able to get at least fifty today.”

“They distance-classified it though, didn’t they?”

Phil shrugged automatically, but it was lost beneath his thick suit. “Yeah, but we’ve never had a problem with those before. It’s not hard to calculate if something living can evolve on a planet.”

Dan looked dubious, but he nodded and they continued on, navigating around the upheavals and dips of the surface. The display on their helmets guided them toward a chalky rock spire that was a few hundred metres downhill from the transporter. It wasn’t that far, but the ground was tumultuous, and it took them a good twenty minutes to navigate their way to it.

“Walking back up there is going to suck,” said Dan once they reached the spire, glancing back up the incline to the transporter. It was only halfway visible now, the top protruding sleek and elegant over the uneven terrain between them.

Phil agreed but, “At least we don’t have to go back up for a few hours.”

Dan was wearing a full-body spacesuit, but his disgruntled posture was clear anyway. “It’s been a hundred years since interstellar travel became possible and they still haven’t invented teleporters. We shouldn’t have to walk anywhere.”

“It’s good for us,” said Phil. “We need exercise.”

Offended, Dan argued, “We have a _gym_ in the carrier.”

“Which you never use,” Phil pointed out.

Their radios both crackled. “Guys,” PJ called over the connection, his voice patchy and riddled with static. “Your lines are open. I can hear you.”

They simultaneously disconnected their connection from the radio back at the transporter. Every one of the other nine members of their team was aware, on some level, that Dan and Phil were together, but that didn’t mean that either of them wanted their conversations overheard.

“We’re all alone now,” said Dan and winked at Phil.

In response, Phil poked out his tongue in a mature fashion, and then they turned toward the rock spire and began collecting samples.

The process wasn’t difficult, it was just time-consuming. For only one sample, Phil had to go through numerous steps and not make a mistake on any of them. This was what his six-year stint in university and then the training academy had taught him. Well, that, and a few functions for their transporter. He had to know how to fly the transporter back to their deep-space carrier, just in case something happened to the pilot.

He would select a particular area of the rock and hold his scanner over it for a few minutes. Once the scanner confirmed the basic element of the rock, he would scoop out the small sample and log its information, then deposit it into one of his many sample containers. If any of the items he scanned were too similar to another log he had taken, he had to move on. Dan’s scanner synced with his as well, so there weren’t any accidental double-logs of the same sample.

This rock spire was chalky on the surface, but Phil only had to scoop out one sample to find that there was a different material underneath, a thicker, more porous rock. This spire would likely provide between three to five samples, so they would spend at least an hour here.

They took their time collecting the rock samples. It wouldn’t do to mislabel anything and have to come back later to try to find the same material again. They found six total samples at this rock spire, with Dan documenting four of the surface layers and Phil digging deeper to get a more porous rock, which took considerably longer.

Once they had scanned most of the spire and couldn’t find any results that differed from what they had already found, they moved further down the incline to another, more steeply-angled spire. Phil collected samples from the base while Dan heaved himself up onto a ledge to reach up higher. They weren’t going to be able to get up further than that today, but they would bring the heliprobes tomorrow. The tiny probes, assisted by artificial intelligence, could fly up to the highest reaches and retrieve samples, but it still required documentation by one of the explorers.

“There isn’t much up here,” Dan called down to Phil, whose head was ducked barely millimetres from a strangely striped rock formation. “It’s mostly material we’ve already sampled. I think a lot of the surface material is the same.”

Phil frowned at the striated rock in front of his nose. “I think you’re right.” He scanned the rock anyway and took a sample. Dan was finished with his ledge by the time Phil had completed the labelling process, so he climbed down next to Phil.

They both spared a glance back up the incline, but the transporter was out of sight at this point. There were too many hills between them.

“Well,” said Phil, “I guess we need to keep going down. Let me tell PJ first, though.” He tapped the screen on the back of his right hand, the thick material of his gloves barely making a sound against it, and the line to their pilot opened instantly. “Hey, PJ,” he greeted. “We have about ten samples so far, but we need to go down further. There’s not a lot of variety right here.”

PJ’s voice was fuzzy when it came through. “You’re...down? How many...found?”

Phil tapped the screen, his eyebrows furrowing. He exchanged a glance with Dan, who shrugged helplessly.

“The aluminium elements in the rocks here are probably dampening the radio waves,” Dan offered.

“I guess,” said Phil, but he couldn’t help the purse of his lips. “There must be more than we calculated, then.” He spoke again to PJ, a little slower this time. “We’re going further down. Three hours max.”

“Cheers!” said PJ, the static surrounding his voice clearing a little. “See you...a bit!”

Phil closed the connection and then they continued down the steep hill. It went down for a good while, sloping gently somewhere a mile down and then sloping harshly upwards again. The distance was pitted with jagged dips and spears of rock.

This entire planet was something harsh and wrecked, sharp in every way it could be. It was a good distance from its star, enough so that the temperature wasn’t unbearable, but it was still considerably warmer than any human could survive. Their suits regulated the temperature, as well as supplying them with the proper amount of air, since the atmosphere wasn’t breathable either. Nothing about the planet was hospitable toward life.

They stopped once they’d manoeuvred further down for about thirty minutes. The muscles in Phil’s thighs were aching by the time they reached their temporary destination. He didn’t look forward to climbing back up to the summit.

The new place where they chose to collect samples was a shallow depression in the ground. It was only shallow compared to the other pits in the area, though: it was well over ten metres deep and a few dozen metres wide. It had ridges of rock lining the edge, so it wasn’t too difficult to climb down into. The bottom of the depression was dark and dangerous-looking, but Phil had a light installed into his helmet and wasn’t too worried. He found hand- and footholds on the side of the pit and hoisted himself over the edge, making his way down painstakingly slowly. Dan followed, a little to Phil’s left. The silver dome of his helmet glinted dully with the light from the planet’s star for a few moments, and then slowly vanished as they descended.

Phil turned on his helmet’s light before he reached the bottom. The rocks he gripped were sturdy, but the light was dim down here, and he didn’t want to misstep even if his suit was thickly padded and an uneven landing likely wouldn’t hurt him. The beams of light from his helmet glanced over the dark rocks as Phil hopped the last half metre to the ground and surveyed the area. It was jagged with rocks, just like the surface, but considerably smoother. The rocks’ appearance was different too, which was what Phil had been hoping to find.

Dan landed with a solid _thump_ beside Phil and grinned over at him, the internal light from his helmet lighting up his face in an eerie glow. “Exercise,” he said. “Are you happy?”

“No,” said Phil, but he was grinning back. The lag through their communicators was funnier than anything else to Phil - it was like watching a movie with the audio a few seconds behind. He might be used to it by now, but that didn’t make it less hilarious. Their radios were the newest model and they were two metres away from each other, but somehow scientists couldn’t figure out how to make it work without a lag.

“My legs are going to be noodles by the time we’re done,” Dan mourned, already turning toward the wall of the pit. His own light flashed briefly through the thick darkness around them, the natural light far above them.

Phil went in the opposite direction Dan decided to go, but they still stayed close. The opposite end of the hole wasn’t far, and yet Phil’s light beam didn’t quite pierce the darkness that far. He didn’t like that.

“I’ll get this side,” said Dan, and even only a few metres from Phil, there was a slight crackle from the transmission. Phil frowned at the scratching and made himself a mental note to get their radios checked out once they made it back to the carrier.

Phil began collecting a sample from the nearest rock face of the wall that he had climbed down. He held the scanner over it, moving not an inch as it slowly, slowly scanned. After the few minutes passed, the scanner lit up with verification that it was a different element from the rocks on the surface. Satisfied, Phil performed the necessary steps to retrieve a sample. He could see Dan doing the same on the rock wall. They continued the repetitive tasks, moving slowly away from each other as they filled the tiny sample containers.

The samples weren’t heavy but as they added up, Phil could begin to feel their weight. He was glad they didn’t have to wear their oxygen tanks on this planet, at least. That would have added a solid hundred pounds to an already heavy suit. Since this planet’s atmosphere was within eighty percent of Earth’s, their suits’ filtration systems could pull enough oxygen from the air for them to breathe, for now, anyway.

Phil was on his fourth sample when he reached a sheer portion of the wall that looked impenetrable, but when he held the scanner over it, he could see the minute cracks in the surface. It tempted him with its unnatural formation, so he ignored the procedure for a moment and lightly brushed a gloved finger over it. Pieces of the rock crumbled beneath his touch.

“Huh,” said Phil aloud. He glanced around for his partner. “Hey, Dan, do you - ” And he stopped, because Dan wasn’t collecting samples. He was on the far side of the pit - how had he gotten over there so quickly? - and he was crouched down close to the wall, veiled in shadows. Phil only saw him because the light on Phil’s helmet glanced off the metal on Dan’s suit zippers.

Phil’s words finally made it to Dan, since Phil could see him straighten and then turn toward Phil. There was silence for a moment, Dan’s face still shrouded by the oppressive darkness of the pit, and then his voice came through the scratchy speakers.

“I heard something.”

Phil took an instinctive step back. “You what?” He must have misheard Dan.

Another pause as his words made their way to Dan and then Dan’s reply made its way back to Phil. “I _heard_ something,” repeated Dan. “Like something moving.”

A whisper of fear shivered up Phil’s spine. This planet wasn’t prone to shifting, as far as he had read in the reports, but the reports didn’t know everything. If the ground was going to shudder around them in an earthquake, then they needed to be far away from here.

“Are you sure?” he asked, still unmoving. The sleek wall beside him breathed a few puffs of dust as his glove brushed against it again. His scanner was held slack in his other hand.

Dan started moving toward him. It was barely noticeable, since he was still mostly cast in shadow, but Phil could see his helmet bobbing up and down as he walked. It would look horrifically ominous if Phil didn’t know that it was Dan.

A terrible shriek of static came through the internal speakers of Phil’s suit, and he winced at the noise. It stopped just as Dan really came into the view of Phil’s spotlight, his face fading from obscurity into the clearly defined slopes of his furrowed brows and his moving lips. His - moving lips? Phil squinted to see what he was saying since the transmission still hadn’t come through his speakers.

“Won?” he offered, confused. “Hun?”

There was another burst of static, and then Dan’s voice came through as clearly as if he had been standing right next to Phil. The shadows behind him, thick in the murk, began moving.

“ _Run!”_

Phil ran.

The suit weighed him down, but his legs were long and he covered ground swiftly. The area of the wall that he had climbed down wasn’t that far, anyway, just a dozen metres to his left. He hesitated for a moment before he put his hands to the rock. Dan wasn’t far behind him, but _something_ was moving in the dark behind Dan. It was fast, and it was getting closer. Phil climbed.

He couldn’t hear anything through the radio between him and Dan, and he didn’t know if that was better or worse. His mind spun as he climbed, darting between Dan, their pilot still out of range of their transmitter, the carrier just outside the gravity pull of this planet, and then to whatever the thing was behind and below him.

His fingers scrabbled for purchase in his rush, and he almost slipped more than once, but his panicked mind was just clear enough to keep him steady. He looked down more than once, heart rising with relief when he saw Dan just below him, climbing at a steady pace. He didn’t let himself look past Dan’s set expression to the mass of writhing shadows that was beneath both of them.

The top was five metres away, then two, then one, and then Phil was pulling himself up over the edge. His shoes thudded solidly on the ground, but instead of immediately beginning to run up the incline back to the transporter, Phil turned to reach down and help Dan up the remaining distance.

His shadow fell over Dan, still climbing, as he crouched down and stretched out a hand for Dan to grab as soon as he was within reach. He looked into Dan’s eyes, the usual warm brown eyes swimming in terror, and he felt something take a hold of his gut and wrench in matching dread.

Then, fear pulled his gaze past Dan’s set expression and he saw what was following them. His brain rejected it immediately. It was nothing like anything he had ever seen before, on any planet. His first disbelieving thought was that the classification for this so-called dead planet had clearly been wrong. Maybe this wasn’t life as scientists considered it, but it was _something_ that could move, and was wreathed in shadows, and it had _teeth_.

And it was reaching for Dan.

Dan snagged Phil’s outstretched hand just as a tendril of something dark and wirey slipped around Dan’s ankle. Dan shuddered in horror, his other hand grasping uselessly at the ledge where Phil was kneeling.

Phil solidly grasped Dan’s gloved arm with both hands and threw himself backwards with all his might. There was a strain, a moment of uncertainty, and then Dan scrambled up over the ledge, clutching to Phil in desperation. This time, Phil could clearly see what he was mouthing, although their communicators had evidently decided to give up the ghost on them.

 _Run, run, run, run_.

So they both ran. Their boots thudded against the ground, suits slowing them as they sprinted up the incline that they had trekked down only twenty minutes before.

It took them less than ten minutes to make it back up the hill. Phil didn’t look back once. Dan did, and every time his gaze fell upon whatever had made it out of that pit with them, he picked up the pace just a little. Their communicators didn’t work the entire way back. Something had broken deep inside the devices, nothing that could be fixed on this planet, the transporter, or even out in the carrier. By some miracle, neither of them fell the entire way up.

The door to the transporter was already sliding open as Dan and Phil rounded the last rock spire. PJ must have seen them on the low-range radar, then.

They stumbled through the door to the tiny compartment right inside, and Phil immediately hit the emergency button that slammed shut the outermost door. He heaved in deep breaths, the filtration system working overdrive in his suit as it acclimated to the new pressure inside the transporter. He could see Dan doing the same beside him, bending over as he grasped his knees and coughed. The small room was usually comforting in its confined space, but now it felt suffocating. It still hadn’t opened to the main compartment, where Dan and Phil had spent their time getting suited up earlier.

The speaker above their heads crackled before a voice came over. “Guys,” said PJ. A long moment passed and he didn’t continue. His breath sounded wet over the speaker.

Dan straightened, still panting, and his and Phil’s gazes locked. Neither of them blinked as they waited for PJ to continue.

Something outside thumped against the transporter. The walls shuddered with the movement, but the door didn’t move. Phil’s heart hadn’t slowed from their race up the hill, but now it thudded even more dangerously against his breastbone. They weren’t moving, but the thing outside was.

“Guys,” said their pilot again. They could hear a cough. “Hey, guys. Sorry.”

Phil barely dared to let out a sound, but he darted his tongue to lick his dry lips before asking, “Sorry?” PJ probably couldn’t hear him anyway.

Another heavy breath sounded through the speakers. A thud came from the main compartment of the transporter, just two metres to Dan’s left. There was no air in Phil’s lungs.

One last sentence from PJ.

“Something got in.”

**Author's Note:**

> [reblog](https://itsmyusualphannie.tumblr.com/post/189981518810/lead-me-into-the-light) if you dare!
> 
> drop a comment with your favourite (or least favourite) line! :)


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